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PINE BLUFFS — In September 2005, President Bush nominated pro-life advocate Ellen Sauerbray to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration.
Appointments as Assistant Secretaries of State require Senatorial confirmation. And they’re not always beneath anyone’s radar. Immediately, Refugees International, Population Action International, Salon Magazine and the Washington Post, spouting the vitriol for which Leftist groups are known, voiced opposition. How did Sauerbrey attract such formidable foes?
During the past three years, Ellen served as Ambassador to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, effectively representing the Administration on international women’s issues. Staunchly opposed to abortion, she incurred the wrath of abortion activists with efforts to eliminate from the U.N.’s Women’s Rights Declaration, language that women had a right to abortion.
In her new post, Ellen will oversee a 700 million dollar budget dealing with refugee protection, resettlement and humanitarian aid.
Last November, Sauerbray, after attending a conference of First Ladies of the Americas in Paraguay where she represented Laura Bush, appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Confirmation was delayed by a disgruntled Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who seems dissatisfied with any nomination President Bush makes.
A kid from Northeast Baltimore, daughter of a steel worker and stay-at-home mom, Ellen graduated Summa cum Laude from Western Maryland College, a Methodist school in Westminster, Maryland with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology. A partial scholarship and a stint working in the college dining hall helped pay the freight. “I had to work hard to get through,” she said.
After college, Ellen married Will Sauerbray. They’d met years earlier, when Will, a Mechanical Engineer for Black and Decker, delivered the newspaper to Ellen’s home. They’re still together, testimony to their loving commitment to each other.
For years, Ellen taught Biology. Of her teaching days, a cohort said: “She did more than just teach Biology. She taught her students about life; about a commitment to excellence; about self discipline and self-respect.
EYE-OPENING JOURNEY
In 1968, the Sauerbrays visited Will’s relatives in Bavaria, West Germany and Thuringen, East Germany. On that trip, Ellen glimpsed the contrast between lifestyles, and began thinking about the importance of personal freedom. “West German farmers worked their land at night using headlights on their huge modern combines,” she said. “East German workers punched time clocks and rushed home from their non-productive collective farms to work tiny garden plots with hoes, eager to reap what they could from the only thing they owned.”
This excursion showed Ellen that “. . . when government deprives people of personal freedom and property rights, it destroys incentive, risk-taking, capital investment and economic growth.”
NEW INTEREST, NEW LIFE
Home again, she lost no time pursuing her new interest — politics — supporting Ronald Reagan’s 1968 presidential bid. That led to her election to the Republican State Central Committee. A fiscal and social conservative, she also helped found the Maryland Taxpayers Coalition.
In 1978, Ellen won election to Maryland’s House of Delegates, running on issues which resonated across the board; lowering taxes and reducing the size of state government. In ’86, her cohorts in the House elected her Republican Minority Leader. In that slot, she worked to instill in Republican legislators backbone sufficient to articulate a coherent Republican message for Maryland voters. This helped immensely during her first run for the State House.
ELLEN RUNS FOR GOVERNOR
That happened in 1994. Lacking name recognition, Ellen trekked from one end of Maryland to the other speaking to whomever she could round up. Before long, she was filling halls and raising campaign dollars with her message of fiscal responsibility, lower taxes and less government. When smoke from a bruising primary cleared, she’d won the Republican nomination. Nationally-syndicated columnist George Will dubbed Ellen, “Maryland’s Margaret Thatcher.”
Maryland had had no Republican governor for twenty-five years, and no woman had ever been its governor. Yet Ellen lost the general election by only 5,993 out of 1.25 million votes. Astute political observers credit her with revitalizing The Line State’s Republican Party, energizing its workers, and setting the stage for Republican Robert Ehrlich to step into the Governor’s mansion in 2002.
Encouraged by her good showing, Ellen decided on a rematch in ‘98. However, since most Marylanders favored legalized abortion and gun control laws, she determined to soft-pedal her pro-life, anti-gun control positions. “It’s essential to broaden the base to win in November,” she said (Baltimore Sun, 5/18/97). Despite a loyal following, a strong statewide organization, and name recognition for which any candidate would kill, her second bid also fell short.
AMBASSADOR ELLEN SAUERBREY
Soon after moving to the White House in 2000, George W. Bush tapped Ellen to represent the U.S. at the U.N. Commission’s conference on Human Rights in Geneva. Later, he appointed her to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, where she circled the world speaking on behalf of women’s rights and mentoring women’s organizations about how to become involved in the political process.
In 2004, the 10th Anniversary of the International Year of the Family, Ellen attended regional dialogues in Mexico City, Stockholm, Geneva, and Kuala Lumpur, preparing for the U.N.’s Conference for the Family in Doha, Qatar, later that year. This conference produced the Doha Declaration, which affirms the family as the fundamental unit of society entitled to protection by the state, and calls upon all nations to preserve and defend the institution of marriage.
PRESIDENTIAL ACTION
During Ellen’s confirmation hearing, Democrats repeatedly voiced concern about this State Department vacancy. Nevertheless, at Senator Boxer’s request, they postponed a vote until after their recess. On January 4, 2006, a disgusted George Bush exercised a presidential option; the recess appointment.
There’s little doubt that Sauerbray, perhaps the latest real-life version of TV’s Wonder Woman, will perform well in her new role.
Sacco, a licensed private detective and a published author of two novels, The China Connection, and Little Sister Lost, writes from Pine Bluffs.